I was a student for twenty-one years. And I was a teacher for fifteen years. August brings its own particular and peculiar blend of delight, hope, anxiety, and curiosity. I love clean calendar pages, the smell of new books, nametags (which I actually think we should wear in perpetuity), and fresh starts. I
During my time in Covid quarantine this week, I have been reading Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times by Rabbi David Wolpe, one of our Lenten Preaching Series preachers for our 100th anniversary in 2023. This week, I especially identify with his thoughts about exile. Rabbi Wolpe writes, “Exile is the prerequisite for
Everyone, who thinks about the larger mainstream church in America today, ponders the question of why our numbers keep dropping. Though statistics vary, in one big poll from 2000 to 2018, the number of Americans who claim membership in church dropped from 69% to 52%. Whatever the precise number, it is a big drop. Not
“The harshest winter finds in us an invincible spring,” wrote philosopher Albert Camus.
I have turned to those words for quite some time when feeling overwhelmed by buffeting emotions that threaten to throw me completely off course. After the last six months or so of senseless outbursts of violence at home, a heartrending war in Ukraine,
It’s a lot. It’s too much, really.
Our minds were not meant to process all the information that is now flooding our days. Our hearts seem not quite large enough to fit all the cares that cry for our attention.
Gun violence and the simultaneous weakening of gun safety regulations. The
A writer is quoted as saying, ‘It’s never too late to be who you might have been.’ That would seem to apply to Julia Child, who found her true calling, being a teacher of French cooking on television, relatively late in life when she was in her 50s. Her participation as a learner and teacher
Wendell Berry observed that the eyes were once considered the window to the soul. Now, making eye contact with a stranger on an American city sidewalk can be construed as a form of aggression.
What does this say about our souls?
The problem here, I suspect, is not urbanization, but privatization. The privatization
Sometimes our liturgical calendar seems to dovetail with the events happening around us. Sometimes, the contrast between the feast and seasonal days in our calendar and what’s actually happening in our world can jar and unnerve us. That is the case this week. Today is Ascension Day, a day when we celebrate Jesus triumphantly ascending
Two years ago on Mother’s Day, my children and grandchildren gave me an amazing gift: a large, full-on bird-feeder! Made of heavy black iron, it has four long curved ‘arms’ that curl on the ends to hold containers for seeds and nuts, a block of suet, and, dried mealworms (!). They planted the feeder outside
by the Rev. Katherine Bush
You may know by now that I often walk in the mornings in Overton Park. Sometimes I walk with my dogs, sometimes without. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I talk to my friend in Connecticut, sometimes I listen to podcasts, sometimes I listen to the birds. A few mornings ago,